Dair Devil Read Online Free Page B

could be unconsciously unfeeling. Rory was surprised yet grateful that Drusilla had not stated the glaringly obvious; that was left to William Watkins, who shared his sister’s unwitting lack of tact.
    He made Rory mentally wince and wish she were a mouse to scurry through a hole in the kicking boards when he said with a sickly-sweet smile of understanding,
    “I am certain Miss Talbot’s interest in Lord Fitzstuart goes no deeper than an appreciation of his exceptional athleticism. As is often the way, what is lacking in ourselves we greatly admire in others. You, my dear Miss Talbot, cannot help being lame, just as I cannot be blamed for my poor eyesight. It is God’s will, and thus we abide it with good grace and forbearance.”
    “If you will follow me to the upstairs drawing room, Mr. Romney will be with you presently,” the butler intoned in the silence which followed Mr. Watkins’ homily, a toe on the first step.
    “You do have your eyeglasses, William?” Lady Grasby asked, bunching up her apricot silk petticoats to ascend the staircase as rapidly as possible in high-heeled mules. “I so want you to examine the portrait, to tell me what it is about it that is vexing me.” She paused on a sudden thought and looked over her shoulder, a gloved hand to the polished balustrade. “Don’t trouble yourself to come up, Aurora. We will not be above half an hour.”
    “That would be for the best,” Rory responded cheerfully, standing at the base of a staircase that would take her twice the time to ascend than anyone else but a child taking its first steps. “I know so little about art that I would be of no help to you whatsoever.” Her gaze swept the hall for a settee or a wingchair. “Mr. Romney must have a suitable vestibule for visitors on this level…”
    She was talking to herself. The butler and Lady Grasby, with her brother a step behind, had disappeared up the staircase.
    One of the painter’s assistants rescued her. He stepped into the hall from the studio at the back of the house, dressed in a smock covered in all manner of colored daubs, and in time to be privy to the conversation. He offered Rory to follow him to a small viewing room off Mr. Romney’s painting studio. There was a fire in the grate and a comfortable chair to sit upon and wait.
    The fire was welcoming, but her interest was not in the many painted canvases stacked against two walls, or in those propped on easels ready for inspection, but in the sounds of commotion coming from the other side of a door left ajar by the assistant. Interest piqued, Rory entered the large well-lit room uninvited, and found it brimming with activity and laughter.
    She was halfway across the room and beside a canvas propped on an easel before her trespass was finally noticed by those on the stage in front of her. She took only a cursory glance at the canvas of a half-finished painting, more interested in the group of scantily-dressed females whose modesty was saved by strategically draped diaphanous silks. While these draperies covered their torsos and flowed to their stockinged feet, the sheerness of the fabric did little to hide their limbs and female attributes. All possessed the long shapely legs of the opera dancer. This was confirmed when three of their number broke from the group and danced out across the stage, holding hands and twirling this way and that on the balls of their stockinged feet, slim graceful arms offering an elegant counterpoint to their footwork.
    Their movements caused the silks pinned at their shoulders to slip and bunch at the blue sash tied about their trim waists. Long hair, carefully pinned and decorated with flowered wreaths, unraveled in heavy coils down narrow backs and across small rounded breasts that bounced free; petals dropped from the flowers and were strewn across the stage in the wake of their steps.
    They appeared as Greek statues of glistening white marble come to life with their sculptured white limbs and powdered